Custom Animations

Contents

Overview

Animations for rigged objects in Overgrowth are stored with one of the Phoenix Engine's custom binary file formats, namely the PHXANM (Phoenix Animation) format. To export an animation to a PHXANM (File mask: .anm) file you need to use Wolfire's custom export addon for Blender. A repackaged version of Blender for Windows with the export addon and with the UI set up for this task can be downloaded here.

Exporting an animation

Create your custom animation in Blender

Set the metadata for your animation in the properties sidebar of the skeleton TODO: ADD IMAGE

Click the From Timeline button to set the timeline's start & end frames as the start & end points of your animation; Note: Keyframes outside of this time frame won't be exported.

Set the Looping value to 0 if you don't want your animation to loop. Set it to 1 if you want it to loop. Todo: If the value is higher, will it do sth different, like play the animation n times?

Event Keyframes

Event keyframes are used to tell the game at which moment of an animation an event is going to happen. This is used to trigger attack impacts and footstep sounds among other things.
An event is saved as a Custom Property of a bone in the Blender files shipped with the game.

Event Name

Description

event_attackimpact

Will trigger the actual impact while attacking a character

event_attackblocked

event_rightcrouchwalkstep

event_rightrunstep

Will trigger footstepsound, particles and IK ?

event_rightwalkstep

event_rightwallstep

event_golimp

event_grabitem

event_heldweaponswap

event_rightweaponrelease

event_sheatherighthandlefthip

event_sheatherighthandrighthip

event_throatcut

event_unsheatherighthandlefthip

event_unsheatherighthandrighthi

Adding an event Keyframe to your animation

Select the 3rd of the rig's layers from the bottom right.TODO: ADD IMAGE The bones should be named DEF-<Bonename>

Select the appropriate bone for the event you want to trigger while being in pose mode

Set the playhead in the timeline to the moment you want the event to happen

In the Properties editor, press Bone and scroll down to Custom Properties

Hover over the property that corresponds to the event you want to trigger and press I to add a keyframe. (Value doesn't matter)